Saturday, May 31, 2014

Blogger Mick Hartley, who closely follows events in North Korea, is also a great photographer (and photo and a sharer of great popular music in various genres. This week he featured the fine Randy Travis song "On the Other Hand," a really fine song.

It got me to thinking that there is an unrecognized country genre: the "almost cheating song." You can find many lists of top country cheating songs like this one. The finest example to my ears is "Almost Persuaded," a 1966 hit for David Houston.

"Almost Persuaded" spent nine weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard magazine Hot Country Singles chart starting in August 1966[2] and has since gone on to become a country standard. The song was also a moderate pop hit, reaching twenty-four on the Billboard pop chart and was David Houston's only Top 40 entry on the pop charts.[3]

For 46 years and two months, no No. 1 song matched the chart-topping longevity of "Almost Persuaded," until Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" notched its ninth week atop the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart the week of December 15, 2012.

I'm reasonably sure that I heard Almost Persuaded in 1966, though I don't know whether it was country tune played on the (mostly) Wichita or OKC rock station I would have been listening to or perhaps it caught my ear when I crossed KFDI on my way from one station to another.

Regardless, it is a fine song and it has been covered by lots of artists, from the unexpected like George Jones, Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, and the Conway Twitty to the unexpected like R&B giant Etta James.

It is interesting to note that James places the encounter at a party, while the original is in a bar room, a setting preserved (I think) by most country artists. There seems to be quite a few neo-soul women singers who have learned the song from James and use the party setting. Female singers naturally need to change the "ruby red lips" lyric, but they differ whether the tempter has "baby blue" or "big brown" eyes.

I found an interesting "Almost Persuaded" mix that has quite a few versions inspired by James. Additional versions can probably be found by searching on YouTube, but be aware that there is a gospel song with the same title.

The name seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't recall any details. It turns out that Ruhle wrote one of the first Marxist books I ever read which was a condensed version of Marx's Capital, though it is understandable that his name didn't really register. The thin paperback was introduced by Leon Trotsky and it was marketed asLeon Trotsky Presents the Living thoughts of Karl Marx . (It is online as Karl Marx's Capital.)

There's lots more that is interesting about Ruhle.

Ruhle worked closely with Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and was an activist in the Spartacist League. Later he was associated with the Council Communist movement and was an opponent of Leninism from the left. An early opponent of fascism, he fled to Mexico after Hitler's seizure of power. In 1937 he served on the Dewey Commission which examined and rejected the Stalinist calumnies against Trotsky.

1. Bolshevism is a nationalistic doctrine. Originally and essentially
conceived to solve a national problem, it was later elevated to a
theory and practice of international scope and to a general doctrine.
Its nationalistic character comes to light also in its position on the
struggle for national independence of suppressed nations.

2. Bolshevism is an authoritarian system. The peak of the social
pyramid is the most important and determining point. Authority is
realized in the all-powerful person. In the leader myth the bourgeois
personality ideal celebrates its highest triumphs.

3. Organizationally, Bolshevism is highly centralistic. The central
committee has responsibility for all initiative, leadership,
instruction, commands. As in the bourgeois state, the leading members of
the organization play the role of the bourgeoisie; the sole role of the
workers is to obey orders.

4. Bolshevism represents a militant power policy. Exclusively
interested in political power, it is no different from the forms of rule
in the traditional bourgeois sense. Even in the organization proper
there is no self-determination by the members. The army serves the party
as the great example of organization.

5. Bolshevism is dictatorship. Working with brute force and
terroristic measures, it directs all its functions toward the
suppression of all non-bolshevik institutions and opinions. Its
“dictatorship of the proletariat” is the dictatorship of a bureaucracy
or a single person.

6. Bolshevism is a mechanistic method. It aspires to the automatic
co-ordination, the technically secured conformity, and the most
efficient totalitarianism as a goal of social order. The
centralistically “planned” economy consciously confuses
technical-organizational problems with socio-economic questions.

7. The social structure of Bolshevism is of a bourgeois nature. It
does not abolish the wage system and refuses proletarian
self-determination over the products of labour. It remains therewith
fundamentally within the class frame of the bourgeois social order.
Capitalism is perpetuated.

8. Bolshevism is a revolutionary element only in the frame of the
bourgeois revolution. Unable to realize the soviet system, it is thereby
unable to transform essentially the structure of bourgeois society and
its economy. It establishes not socialism but state capitalism.

9. Bolshevism is not a bridge leading eventually into the socialist
society. Without the soviet system, without the total radical revolution
of men and things, it cannot fulfill the most essential of all
socialistic demands, which is to end the capitalist
human-self-alienation. It represents the last stage of bourgeois society
and not the first step towards a new society.

These nine points represent an unbridgeable opposition between Bolshevism and socialism. They demonstrate with all necessary clarity
the bourgeois character of the Bolshevist movement and its close
relationship to fascism. Nationalism, authoritarianism, centralism,
leader dictatorship, power policies, terror-rule, mechanistic dynamics,
inability to socialize-all these essential characteristics of fascism
were and are existing in Bolshevism. Fascism is merely a copy of Bolshevism. For this reason the struggle against the one must begin with
the struggle against the other.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

While in Berlin last week for the International Trade Union Confederation Congress and LabourStart's Global Solidarity Conference, I observed lots of election posters for the Euro elections which were held last week.

My theory was the party votes would be roughly in inverse proportion to the attractiveness of the posters. The two leading parties, the CDU and the SPD, seem to have relied more on billboards, while the other parties had more posters.

Here's a defaced CDU (Christian Democratic Union) billboard featuring Chancellor Angela Merkel, followed by a poster featuring another CDU politician, and then an issue themed billboard.

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Reviewer Steve Leggett hits it on the nail "Iris DeMent
isn't a pop star, although she probably could have been had she been at
all interested in playing that game. She's a careful, detailed
songwriter with a confessional edge and a good sense of narrative, and
her voice is a marvelous instrument that seems to rise out of the
previous century."

her independent label offering Infamous Angel
won almost universal acclaim thanks to her pure, evocative vocal style
and spare, heartfelt songcraft. Despite a complete lack of support from
country radio, the record's word-of-mouth praise earned her a deal with
Warner Bros., which reissued Infamous Angel in 1993 as well as its follow-up, 1994's stunning My Life.

Her third LP, 1996's eclectic The Way I Should, marked a dramatic change not only in its more rock-influenced sound but also in its subject matter; where DeMent's prior work was introspective and deeply personal, The Way I Should
was fiercely political, tackling topics like sexual abuse, religion,
government policy, and Vietnam. In 1999, she collaborated with country
man John Prine on his album In Spite of Ourselves. DeMent recorded four duets with Prine
that earned her a Grammy nod the following year. Her own recording
career was on hiatus for the late '90s and early 2000s, but she returned
in 2005 with Lifeline, a collection of gospel hymns. Released in 2012, Sing the Delta,
her first album of original songs in 16 years, found her working again
within the sparse and emotional quilt of her earlier releases.

Jimmy Roque Martinez, on the occasion of International Workers Day on May 1, wrote a very fine column "The Earth Trembles in Cuba"
on the Havana Times website, one of the few outlets for independent writing from Cuba.

Thousands of workers marched across the Plaza of the Revolution in “support” of the Cuban Revolution and its leaders.

The Cuban working class is one of the few in the world that does not
have to fight for better working conditions. They must only show their
gratitude and obedience to maintain the gains achieved.

This International Workers Day the Cuban working class jubilantly celebrated several victories achieved. For example:

Having a wage labor system.

That this wage is not even sufficient to feed themselves.

That they do not own the means of production, although the state says otherwise.

That they have a union they supports their employers and not them as a working class

That their union federation supports the massive layoffs of state employees.

That the retirement age was increased by five years with the support of the CTC.

That a labor law passed four months ago, still unknown in its final form, eliminated the right to employment.

That they will receive a measly pension.

Here is his conclusion

May Day is definitely not a day of celebration for the Cuban working class. There are many rights to fight for, much exploitation to eliminate.

The earth trembled in Havana, but with demagoguery, injustice and the
exploitation of workers in the name of a nonexistent socialism and the
strengthening of capitalism.

Saturday, May 03, 2014

For this weeks Country Club, something on the Hispanic-Country connection seems appropriate with Cinco de Mayo approaching in a few days. The most obvious selection would be the great Freddy Fender already featured in Country Club #10. Fender was part of the supergroup Texas Tornados. Doug Sahm introduces "Hey Baby Que Paso" as the San Antonio national anthem, which recalls the Negro National Anthem, the bebop national anthem, and the 2006 controversy over a Spanish version of the Star Spangled Banner.

Country music, though we don't usually think of it that way, is multicultural. It isn't just the music of the Scots-Irish of Appalachia. The influence of African-American blues has to be recognized and it often is. But let's remember the contributions of German and Czech music--where do you think those accordions came from. The Tennessee Waltz was written by a Polish American from Wisconsin!.

Traditional Mexican tunes entered the repertoire of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys and became country standards: the Maiden's Prayer (which actually comes from a Polish piano piece) and the (New) Spanish Two Step. Both the Tex-Mex and Tejano music styles have incorporated country with other sounds, though both have appealed primarily to Mexican-Americans.

What will the growth of America's Hispanic population mean for the future of country music?